LIBERTY AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
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about the treatment of material derived from strategic interception as
applied to non-German telephone connections. In particular, the G10 Act
stated that the Federal Intelligence Service was authorised to carry out
monitoring of communications only with the aid of search terms which
served, and were suitable for, the investigation of the dangers described in
the monitoring order and which search terms had to be listed in the
monitoring order (op. cit., § 32). Moreover, the rules on storing and
destroying data obtained through strategic monitoring were set out in detail
in section 3(6) and (7) and section 7(4) of the amended G10 Act (see Weber
and Saravia, cited above, § 100). The authorities storing the data had to
verify every six months whether those data were still necessary to achieve
the purposes for which they had been obtained by or transmitted to them. If
that was not the case, they had to be destroyed and deleted from the files or,
at the very least, access to them had to be blocked; the destruction had to be
recorded in minutes and, in the cases envisaged in section 3(6) and
section 7(4), had to be supervised by a staff member qualified to hold
judicial office. The G10 Act further set out detailed provisions governing
the transmission, retention and use of data obtained through the interception
of external communications (op. cit., §§ 33-50). In the United Kingdom,
extensive extracts from the Code of Practice issued under section 71 of the
2000 Act are now in the public domain (see paragraph 40 above), which
suggests that it is possible for a State to make public certain details about
the operation of a scheme of external surveillance without compromising
national security.
69. In conclusion, the Court does not consider that the domestic law at
the relevant time indicated with sufficient clarity, so as to provide adequate
protection against abuse of power, the scope or manner of exercise of the
very wide discretion conferred on the State to intercept and examine
external communications. In particular, it did not, as required by the Court’s
case-law, set out in a form accessible to the public any indication of the
procedure to be followed for selecting for examination, sharing, storing and
destroying intercepted material. The interference with the applicants’ rights
under Article 8 was not, therefore, “in accordance with the law”.
70. It follows that there has been a violation of Article 8 in this case.
II. ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 13 OF THE CONVENTION
71. The applicants also complained under Article 13, which provides:
“Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in [the] Convention are violated
shall have an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the
violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.”
They submitted that Article 13 required the provision of a domestic
remedy allowing the competent national authority to deal with the substance